People of North America: may the example of all those nations that have preceded you, and especially that of your motherland, be your guide. Beware the abundance of gold that brings about the corruption of morals and the scorn of law; beware of an unbalanced distribution of wealth that will produce a small number of opulent citizens and a horde of citizens in poverty…58 The real threat to American democracy, as Diderot had also suggested in his Essay on Seneca, came less from foreign powers than from the unintended consequences of future success: luxury goods, the rise of class tensions,
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